Christianity Takes Root in Edessa

Eusebius calls Edessa a royal city, whose king ruled beyond the Euphrates and whose records were kept in Syriac (Eusebius, Church History 1.13). He also knew a letter from the churches of its district, Osrhoene, written during the dispute about the date of Easter near the end of the second century (Eusebius, Church History 5.23.2).

In November 201 the river that ran through the city burst its banks at night. A report written by the city’s scribes and deposited in its archives, and copied centuries later into the Chronicle of Edessa, tells how King Abgar VIII watched from a tower by torchlight while the western wall gave way. The water wrecked his palace and the buildings along the river and drowned more than two thousand people. Among the losses the report lists “the temple of the church of the Christians” (Chronicle of Edessa 8).

The Christian teacher Bardaisan, whose birth in 154 the city’s chronicle records, belongs to these years (Chronicle of Edessa 6). Eusebius says that he wrote dialogues in Syriac against the followers of Marcion, at a time when rival teachings abounded in Mesopotamia (Eusebius, Church History 4.30). A dialogue from his school speaks of “the new race of us Christians”, who meet on the first day of the week, and names believers in Parthia, Persia, Media and Edessa. It also says that King Abgar, on becoming a believer, forbade a rite of self-castration performed in honour of a goddess (Book of the Laws of the Countries). It does not say which king of that name is meant.

By the time Eusebius wrote, early in the fourth century, a story was told that traced the church of Edessa to the lifetime of Jesus. Eusebius reports that an earlier King Abgar, being ill, wrote to ask Jesus to come and heal him; that Jesus answered by letter, promising to send a disciple; and that after the ascension Thaddaeus, one of the seventy, came to Edessa, cured the king and preached to the citizens. Eusebius says that he translated the letters from Syriac documents in the city’s archives (Eusebius, Church History 1.13). The city’s own chronicle, which draws on those archives, has no such story, and the first bishop it names is Conon, who began to build a church in the Seleucid year 624, AD 312–313 (Chronicle of Edessa 1–12).

What the flood report and the writings of Bardaisan’s circle show is a Christian community settled in Edessa and writing in Syriac by the opening of the third century (Chronicle of Edessa 8) (Book of the Laws of the Countries). The story of Abgar’s letter, which Eusebius passed on to Greek readers, is an account of those beginnings that was current in his day (Eusebius, Church History 1.13).